oil

By Ole Hansen It is said that the best cure for a low price is a low price. This is an apt description for what’s happened in global oil markets these past couple of years. The raised risk of supply disruptions following the Arab Spring in 2011 triggered a three-year period where high but also relatively

July 17 – A failed Turkish military coup attempt briefly closed the Bosphorus Strait to shipping traffic on Saturday, reminding the world of Turkey’s huge and growing importance as a transit route for commodities between Russia, Central Asia and Europe. Turkish authorities thwarted a coup by rebels to topple President Tayyip Erdogan. Below are the

The Gulf’s forthcoming reforms bode well for the future BY Tarek Fadlallah The contrarian case for making tactically positive trades during Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) market weakness earlier this year has been sound. It remains on track to deliver further modest gains once Ramadan is over and the traditionally slow summer season has passed. The supportive elements

By Ron Bousso LONDON, May 23 – Oil discoveries in 2015 fell to their lowest since 1952 as energy companies slashed exploration budgets in the wake of the oil price fall, creating a gap for meeting future demand, analysts at Morgan Stanley said on Monday. The oil and gas industry discovered 2.8 billion barrels of

By Aaron Sheldrick and Osamu Tsukimori TOKYO, May 18 – Iran’s oil exports are set to surge in May, climbing nearly 60 percent from a year ago, with European shipments recovering to about half of pre-sanction levels, according to a source with knowledge of the country’s crude lifting plans. This shows Tehran is regaining market

By Rania El Gamal DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia, May 10 – Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil giant is finalizing options for its partial privatization and will present them to its Supreme Council soon, its chief executive said about the centerpiece of the kingdom’s efforts to overhaul its economy. The company has a huge team working on the

Gulf stocks might be showing weakness, but there’s no need to panic BY Tarek Fadlallah Fortune favors the bold; and the Arab Gulf is no different. The past few months have seen an inclination on the part of investors to bargain-hunt Arab Gulf stocks into technical weakness (a proactive trading strategy in which a trader

OSLO/ALGIERS March 18 – Militants attacked an Algerian gas plant operated by Norway’s Statoil and BP with rocket-propelled grenades on Friday, causing no casualties or damage but forcing the facility to be closed as a precaution. Algeria’s energy infrastructure is heavily protected by the army especially since the 2013 Islamist militant attack on the In

By Rania El Gamal and Alex Lawler March 16 – Oil producers including Gulf OPEC members still support holding a meeting next month to discuss a deal to freeze output even without Iran, OPEC sources said, as political pressure to prop up prices increases. On Monday, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said after talks in

By Katie Paul RIYADH, March 9 – Saudi Arabia’s plans for economic reform foresee winding down ‘jobs for life’ in an inefficient state bureaucracy and replacing them with new careers in a dynamic private sector. That’s the theory, at least. But in the short term, there is a problem: 2016 is set to be an